The Grand Theft Auto 5 giveaway broke the Epic Games Store

Update: Epic has sounded a cautious "mostly clear," but will keep its finger on the pulse in case things go sideways again.

We've deployed updates to provide resolution for these issues, and most users should be able to access the Epic Games Store and Launcher at this time. We'll continue to monitor traffic and provide updates if further issues are encountered. Thank you for your continued patience!May 15, 2020

Original story:

You might think that most people who want the seven-year-old Grand Theft Auto 5 already have it, but that's apparently not the case. It went free today on the Epic Games Store—and immediately broke it.

The moment the new freebie went live, the store started throwing up 505 errors, apparently overwhelmed by demand. Epic acknowledged the overload on Twitter, and asked everyone to please be patient while it worked on the problem.

We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store. We are aware that users may be encountering slow loading times, 500 errors, or launcher crashing at this time and we are actively working to scale. We'll provide an update as soon as we can.May 14, 2020

The issues appeared to be smoothing out, but some users began running into more exotic problems, including random changes to language settings. Our resident Fortnitesmith Joseph Knoop was surprised to find that, after multiple attempts to access the store, he'd suddenly been switched to Spanish.

Epic said it would share an update when things were smoothed out, so we'll let you know when that happens. For now, good luck and godspeed—and remember, GTA5 is free until May 21, so you have a little while to grab it.

Andy covers the day-to-day happenings in the big, wide world of PC gaming—the stuff we call "news." In his off hours, he wishes he had time to play the 80-hour RPGs and immersive sims he used to love so much.